COUNTERPOINT:

Dr Mohammad
Manzoor Alam expresses
concern over anti-Muslim elements trying to drum up mass hysteria under cover of
the recent judicial scrapping of the Illegal Migrants [Detection by Tribunals]
Act.

In the wake of the
Supreme Court’s verdict scrapping the Illegal Migrants [Detection by Tribunals]
Act (IMDT), neo-fascist groups in the North-East have already upped the volume
of their anti-Muslim chorus. We have been getting feedback from the North-East
that a section of the local press has started discussing the issue in a
provocative, menacing way.

In the national media, too, the issue has surfaced
periodically. Sadly, the discourse so far does not seem to take into account the
extreme sensitivity of the subject. Even our national leaders have rarely shown
the sensitivity which the issue demands. Such insensitivity has already wreaked
terrible damage in the past.

Let us cut back to 1982, when the RSS jumped into
the fray created by All Assam Students Union (AASU) on the issue of alleged
illegal migrants. The RSS position has been that Bangladeshi Hindus coming into
Assam are refugees (with well-defined rights under international law), while
Muslim Bangladeshis are intruders (criminal trespassers deserving punishment).

The Assam agitation began in protest against the
“exploitative practices of outsiders”, including Bengali bureaucrats, Marwari
businessmen, sundry moneylenders, contractors and other carpetbaggers from
different regions of India, but the RSS deftly turned it into an anti-Muslim
(especially anti-Bengali Muslim) affair. The witch hunt that followed the
communal hysteria did not hurt the alleged “Bangladeshi Muslims” (few, if any,
were in any case identified) but the Assamese Muslims of Bengali origin.

The Nellie massacre of 23 years ago came at the most
inopportune moment – it was the time when heads of Commonwealth states had
gathered in India for a summit. Nearly 2,000 (officially 1,800) Muslims were
killed in cold blood. The event had followed within days of an irresponsible
speech by Atal Behari Vajpayee, who unfortunately went on to become India’s
prime minister. In his by-then well-known theatrical style, Vajpayee had told a
gathering of Sangh supporters that had “intruders” come into Punjab, they would
have been cut to pieces. And within hours 2,000 people were killed, all Indians.

We have continuously been coming back to the Assam
problem over the years. We published a thorough study of the affair way back in
1988 in the form of a well-received book by HN Rafiabadi. The book, Assam: From
Agitation to Accord, took note of the patterns of immigration into Assam over
the decades and centuries from different areas of India and neighbouring
countries. Even the dominant Assamese ethnic group, the Ahom, are migrants from
Burma.

We returned to the theme with the publication of
another fine study, Immigration of East Bengal Farm Settlers and Agricultural
Development of the Assam Valley. Published in book form in 2003 by IOS, the
author Dr M. Sujaud Doullah, a respected Assamese academic, has studied the
migration patterns and concomitant developments between 1901 and 1947. Both
studies show that the complex ethnic composition of Assam has developed over
centuries and is certainly not a post-1971 phenomenon as is being claimed by
Sangh outfits.

These are the broad
facts, but stray border crossings are not completely ruled out. Nobody holds a
brief for foreigners illegally crossing into India or staying here as illegal
migrants. What we want to suggest here is that instead of making political
capital out of the scrapping of IMDT Act and trying to stage another Nellie, we
should allow proper legal procedures to be followed. A witch hunt is not going
to help anybody. The bottomline here is that for every suspected Bangladeshi
Muslim there are thousands of Indian Bengalis who can potentially be the victim
of mischief-makers.

That, in fact, was the whole point about the IMDT
Act. It made a proper provision for the detection of illegal migrants through
tribunals, which ensured that genuine Indian citizens of Bengali origin were not
hounded out by vigilante groups. The moment requires sensitivity and some effort
to develop alternative mode of protection of genuine citizens of Begali origin
in Assam. This is important because there are a number of cases of Indian
Bengali Muslims being harassed by zealots and corrupt police personnel in
different cities of India in the name of Bangladeshis.g